In this class actors will explore in detail three major focus areas: 1) The Mind of the Character: Studying advanced methods of acting and learning how to create Goal-driven characters. 2) The Body of a Character: A step by step approach to fully embodying a character (and how to create a physical "trigger" to snap into character!) 3) The Character as Part of an Ensemble: Developing advanced creative skills to reacting to others in the scene (and in the class) around you. These three components will be studied in application to each half of the course-- Part 1: Monologues, Part 2: Scene Study. We will often rely on improvisation to explore concepts before applying them to text. Students must have prior acting experience despite their age.